


a problem of memory

by omphale23



Category: due South
Genre: Challenge fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-15
Updated: 2010-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:21:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/omphale23/pseuds/omphale23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chicago is a city that spans continents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a problem of memory

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to my betas, [](http://nos4a2no9.livejournal.com/profile)[**nos4a2no9**](http://nos4a2no9.livejournal.com/), [](http://qe2.livejournal.com/profile)[**qe2**](http://qe2.livejournal.com/) and [](http://llassah.livejournal.com/profile)[**llassah**](http://llassah.livejournal.com/), who went above and beyond the call to make this better and talk me off the ledge. And thanks to the rest of Team Reality, who are awesome and several of whom offered detailed comments and suggestions for earlier drafts.
> 
> The title is taken from "Beauty," by B.H. Fairchild.

Written for **ds_match 2008**

**

_Ray's quiet the morning he finally gets hitched. He thought he'd be scared, because Stella's way out of his league (his dad makes a speech at the rehearsal to remind everyone) and he's got nothing but hope. He's a scrawny kid with a new badge (the shine's still on it). Stella's not perfect (that birthmark on her spine, her elbow cracking on cold mornings) but she's much too good for Ray._

_Still, he shows up at the church (she wanted city hall, they only get one chance) in a rented suit, tugging at his collar but strangely (perfectly, uncomfortably) calm._

__Ray Vecchio takes a cab. She could have gotten up early and driven him the hour to Miami-Dade. Stella could have chosen to make the effort, given him one last gesture. But they've had eight months; only the first four were something worth reminiscing over.

She should have known better, seen the ways that Ray and Ray (one Ray, two Ray, old Ray, new Ray) were the same underneath. She marries men addicted to things hidden, and is too old this time for farewells.

So she stays in bed until the door clicks shut, and then makes too much coffee.__

_Benton realizes that others find him ridiculous and anachronistic. But his father is right; the only real thing is the chase. Benton tries to do what's right, and if that happens to include the sting of ice against his face, the cold smell of leather and crackle of firelight, he's not going to complain._

_Everyone has regrets, things they trade for what's needed, what's important. Benton has fewer than most men, and he can see his life stretching ahead, full of solitary adventures and awkward visits with his father on holidays. It's not perfect, but it's home. He's happy enough._

__Francesca Vecchio sends weekly emails, rambling anecdotes about people Stella doesn't miss, won't think about in the middle of the night when she's alone, balancing the accounts for a business she never wanted.

Stella knows that Fraser and Ray came back from questing months late, that the vacation lasted longer than a marriage, that Ray signed his lease over in the meantime. She reads that Ray (the former, Raymundo) lives there now in some queer reversal of home and station and identity.

Stella reads through the noise for the beginnings of something. Such prognostication was once her job, and it isn't a skill that can be forgotten or ignored. Even from here she can see these three, the lines between them and the coming collision.__

_It starts with the decision not to act like Vecchio. Ray knows how, he has all the files and the photos and plenty of people to give him tips. Hiding has become his best (only, truest) talent, taking the stuff that makes him real and burying it. Good, bad, doesn't matter. It's always somebody else left behind._

_With Vecchio he's lazy. Ray counts on a partner to cover the edges of his personality, figures that he can keep a piece of himself and still be a good (enough) Vecchio most days._

_The trouble is that leaves enough Kowalski to notice that Fraser is much more (and much less) than doing the job._

_So it turns out that not trying hard enough is the first problem._

__She can't take another southern summer.

What's more, she doesn't want to try. Stella's homesick for Chicago, and assumes that she'll be able to ignore the places she no longer fits.

She's wrong.

She watches them sometimes, arguing in the halls. She runs into them leaving restaurants, walking together with that strange overlapping gait, as if Ray's energy is passing through Fraser and transmuting into Ray's grace. Stella sees for herself the way Ray Kowalski looks at Fraser now, notices Ray Vecchio's narrowed glance. She watches Fraser consider them both. She imagines where this is going, this unbalanced partnership of incomplete and lonely men.

She can't help but look, because they're so careful. She can't help wondering which of them will break first, which last.__

_He sleeps in the car. _

_Fraser never intends to do this. He tries to stay awake and discuss the case, argue over pirates and watch Ray's eyes shift from exhaustion into annoyance at his stubborn insistence on reality._

_Instead, his eyes drift shut in northern Indiana. The lull of stubble fields and Ray's cracked harmonies are too much, and he dreams of damage and reconciliation, fist and caress. _

_He wakes to the solemn press of nature, high beams skimming the edges of forests. It's not home, but Fraser feels the city faded away. If they stopped here he could walk the distance to Lake Huron. He could hike under the canopy of trees and never meet another human. _

_At the end, he'd see Canada. _

_The sun filters through pines. Ray is still singing quietly, old tunes in an unknown language. Fraser could walk to the water's edge, but he won't._

__Ray is defined by his hatred of paperwork. It's been years, and she's angry and upset and tired of the whole mess but sitting, waiting, worrying, her name on a list of people to call. She's folded onto slick vinyl, watching Mrs. Vecchio quietly fall apart.

Hours later, when the decisions are made and the doctors are optimistic, Stella can choose to see him (Ray, Rays, them) or stay where she is. She hesitates and reads the forms. She's looking for a reason that Ray would hold her here, would keep this strange connection.

She can still hear the Vecchios arguing through their novenas when she reaches the end. There are three names now; hers is the last. Stella's not as surprised as she pretends that the others are more than partners.

Francesca stopped sending emails when Stella moved home. She wonders what the anecdotes might have said about this.__

_Vecchio, the real Ray Vecchio, the first (only, former, returning, hidden, possibly permanent) Detective Vecchio has a terrible hard look on his face. Ray meets it without blinking (without flinching, without comment) and wonders who he (Armando, Raymundo) killed. He wonders whether they deserved it. He wonders if they saw death coming in the desert._

_Fraser is thrown for a moment in this doorway, and they can both see the echo of Vecchio's choices. Fraser looks surprised. Maybe it's new, maybe this Vecchio is different (older, wiser, colder) from the guy Ray is supposed to be. Maybe Vecchio was a nice guy, and Vegas has taken that from him without offering hope (consolation, prayer, forgiveness) in exchange._

_It makes Ray glad he doesn't live in Vegas._

_Ray can't trust that look, and he won't give Vecchio the chance to change his mind. Whoever Vecchio was, right now he's a threat._

__Eventually Stella can't take it anymore. She's tired of cases she can't win. She's exhausted by years of mistakes and accidents and work that never ends and never makes anything better. She's bitter and she's sad and ten years ago she thought she could change the world.

She can't. She doesn't even want to, and finally has an answer the morning she resigns, when she makes the announcement and Ray looks at her, his glance full of_ what do you mean?_

They did it right, once. They did. Stella and Ray were a one-two punch, his arrests and her convictions. But that's over, and alone Stella's not strong enough.

She almost asks Fraser why he keeps trying, what keeps him going. She's curious, can't figure it out, but she suspects any answer he could give would be a lie. Watching Ray (her Ray, his Ray, Ray's Ray, their Rays) argue over who gets to play bad cop isn't enough this time, but Fraser looks like he's found a new compass.

They throw a party when Stella moves away, makes a new start in an old city. The cake tastes of ashes, of lost hopes and forgotten loves, of promises broken.__

_Fraser's first years in Chicago sting with exile. They are, despite the gloss of ceremony and partnership, bitter and hot and filled with the ache of muscles never relaxed. They are composed of questions unasked and desires unspoken. They're the loss of home, the surrender of the right to breathe clean air and walk open spaces and trace history in the landscape. _

_He is terribly familiar with denial, with its perils and unexpected joys. He was, and is, an expert in such resignation, comforted by the familiarity of loneliness. But then he returns home, and sees it through Ray's eyes, and finds it isn't as large as he remembers. _

_Fraser thought the difference inconsequential. He didn't realize that the choice itself, the decision to stay, makes him anew. This man is one he doesn't recognize in the mirror. He feels something missing, but can't decide what it is._

_Stella Kowalski is gone and has taken Ray Vecchio with her. He suspects that she, of anyone, could have warned him._

_Even now, the longing is altered by the possibility of something more, something familiar and frightening and tied to Chicago and home and places Fraser finds he's willing to live without._

__Chicago is a city that spans continents. Stella's only gone a few weeks, barely settles into this unfamiliar life and language and geography, when the news arrives on a sunny morning. She's not sure how far she needs to run to be alone, but there aren't enough miles to manage the feat.

It's not Francesca calling, which is a small comfort.

Barbara Kowalski, a woman defined by the care she takes with those who rarely deserve it, tries to be gentle and kind and calm. She hints at unexpected entanglements, won't use names, says _he_ and _they_ and _maybe, soon_. Stella wants to scream. She knows these things, has kept them hidden forever, and the reminder is too much, too late.

She forgets, sometimes, that now she's meant to be the one left behind, the one who held on too long, the one who could be hurt by new revelations. It feels so very different on this end of the line.

It feels, from here, from her balcony over a tiny alley, where Stella is scraping at the rusted railing with her fingernail, as if she's the only one moving. As if the world is standing still, waiting for her.


End file.
